I haven't been here in some time because I've gone off the deep end and haven't booted up my PS2 IIDXs in probably at least a year, as I have played LR2 the entire time since then.

Recently, I accidentally discovered how to activate Extra Mode in the game and lo-and-behold it gives old songs new life and fundamentally gives Another charts to songs which never had them - which is particularly nice for Double players.

Unfortunately, the only record saved from playing songs in Extra Mode is the clear status. The score is totally lost.

I initially considered keeping a text file to keep my own records but I found myself wishing that there was a tracker like S3 here to do the job much more elegantly. A cursory web search reveals no score tracker which is made for Extra Mode.

What I propose would be for Extra Mode to basically be a totally segregated pool of charts which would have no bearing on statistics such as the DJ Point totals and the avatar graphic widget and so on. As the scores cannot be saved in the program (not to mention that timing settings can be changed by altering the BMS files), Extra Mode scores would have to be considered to be made on a totally voluntary basis and be exempt from any requisite of proof or basis to accuse someone of fabricating scores (barring obvious egregiousness). Seeing as how it's an unofficial chart modification found only in a sim program, I would like to think that nobody would want to post bullshit scores.

Yes, it's outside of the scope of the console games, but I figured that maybe now is as good of a time as any to give new motivation for people to play and post scores.

If this is entertained, I volunteer to supply note counts for the charts (at least the 14key charts).

Right, and on yet others it gives the song just the extra kick it needs to make it more interesting to play without it becoming too difficult.

Enjoy Your Life H14 and Oosanbashi H14 are two off the top of my head that are much improved with Extra Mode. I'm the most interested in finding charts like that, but I would also like to post scores on the retarded charts just to see where I would stand versus anyone else.

I'd love to see the reactions other players would have for songs like Cyber Force or basically any Ryu* song.

(the important column to see is the second to last, which shows the increase of notes in the chart as a percentage of the old chart's notecount)

Finding "new charts" and being humbled by songs beyond the usual 12*s is a very wonderful sensation to have after playing for so long. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be the only person who would have that kind of reaction.

If it were feasible I'd otherwise be interested in making a mirror of the database functionality to put up my own tracker for this - but I doubt that would go over well, both in terms of being allowed to use this tracker's logic and how relatively few people would use it.

lol. If I ever have to play total horseshit like bitterblossom or ほおづきみたいに紅い魂 ever again for the rest of my life, it'll be too soon.

QUOTE (chotto kiitena @ Oct 18 2011, 06:56 PM)

Do you always get the same chart every time on extra mode?

I'm pretty sure you do, yes. I've replayed a few songs and have had consistent note count totals.

There is an extended option set accessible by holding F2 down, and among the options there is something about setting the "level" of Extra Mode charts based on the original chart's count (or so I think). These options do not save and are set to default each time the game starts up - because of this, I keep all my records with whatever results from those default settings.

Perhaps what could be done would be to put up a test pool of like 10 songs or something to see if it is feasible and gets good response.

Hold down Key 2 on the controller while you're in the options menu for setting Hi Speed and Random and the like. When it activates, the background image for the song selection screen with turn photo negative.

Extra Mode does affect Hypers (which is part of the appeal for DP in particular), but I haven't tried it with Normal charts to see if the effect is similar or reduced in comparison. My best guess would be that it would create the same chart. I'll try it tonight.

All right, results are in, and the answer is that Extra Mode does change Normal charts in a unique fashion compared to a Hyper or an Another.

I have now played through most of the songs in the IIDX library in Extra Mode, and the initial results are in. It seemed evident that playing songs from styles before 4th usually wasn't necessary, so there's some songs that I didn't play from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Substream. For any given song I played the highest level type of chart available, unless specifically noted in the song title.

----edit: 20120210And in other news, after more time with playing through the entire roster, I have encountered a few instances where note counts for a song are in fact dissimilar by a single note. It's happened more than a few times beyond the point where I would consider it error on my part in writing the correct note count down.

So in the end I guess it's just as well that this didn't happen. I still consider it a shame regardless because I definitely enjoy the new challenge and I do believe it is helping me continue to improve in skill.